These ventures weren’t picked by any scientific method; nor do they constitute any consensus of how ICTs will look in the next few years. These are just projects that caught my eye. Because these projects leverage technology in rural areas, let’s start with a discussion on how public internet kiosks could develop in the next few years.

Broadband? by wseltzer on Flickr.

In his blog ICTlogy, Ismael Peña-López wonders whether public internet kiosks like telecentres and cybercafés will evolve into enhanced e-centers, “where communities will gather and benefit from several community resources, computers and Internet access among others? Or will they just disappear?”

He continues:

As libraries have provided more than books, but a place where to learn to read and find kindred souls, it is my guess that public Internet access points will disappear as such, and will either be embedded within existing structures (libraries themselves, or civic centres, to name a few) or the existing telecentres and cybercafes will evolve into a next stage where the learning and community factors will be much more relevant. We are indeed seeing plenty of examples of this, and it is a matter of time that priorities or the focus turns upside down: instead of going to access the Internet and finding people, one will go and find people and use the Internet as an enhanced way to socialize. At its turn, this should be accompanied by the end of this false dichotomy on whether your a citizen or a netizen, as if the network had a live and a citizenry on its own. But time will tell.

Shilpa Sayura

Shilpa Sayura, which means sea of knowledge, is an interactive digital self-learning system based in Sri Lanka. Shilpa Sayura’s course of study began with eight subjects that parallels the national education curriculum so students in remote and rural areas can prepare for national school examinations in Sinhala, the country's predominant local language. The project has added another three courses, including lessons in Tamil and English.

Shilpa Sayura's open-source software was given away to non-profit educational providers and to rural Nansalas, a chain of government-developed telecentres. These telecentres in Sri Lanka fulfill many roles: Some provide connection to the web, but also offer fax, photocopying and printing services. They make money from phone calls, VOIP, and provide a bill-payment service. They are also places, the government hopes, where other ICT projects can bloom.

Harsha Liyanage, originally from Sri Lanka, blogs at Sustainability First: In search of sustainable telecentres. He records some of the issues Shilpa Sayura is attempting to overcome.

[The] Absence of competent teachers and adequate facilities handicap rural students in 80% of the Sri Lankas population. Now over 500 telecentres at rural outskirts provide a new window of opportunity. Shilpa Sayura enables students to interact with ICT to study 8 subjects digitally at tele centers and develop their knowledge to prepare for national examinations.

In March, 2008, Liyanage explained that Shilpa Sayura was undergoing growing pains.

Having a success story of a very compelling pilot, the project struggles at scaling up. Every telecentre operator of over 500 telecentres in Sri Lanka needs to have Shilpa Sayura installed in their telecentre. But, e-Fusion acknowledges it is not feasible at this present state.
• It needs technological improvements to ensure trouble free smooth run.
• Also needs technical capacity building at the telecentre operators to assist the users.
• Need to improve help-desk capacity to accept escalating demands
All these needs significant capital investments. They recognize it is not reasonable to tax the government to support further. Thus eyes at the CSR goodwill of the corporate partners.
In the mean time they plot the plans for an appropriate business model.

The blog Technology and Cultural Festival in Kandiyapitawew from Sri Lanka explains the educational benefits of the project.

We believe ‘Shilpa Sayura’ could contribute to addressing the issue of the shortage of school teachers, especially in distant rural area one which continues to be a setback to the county’s educational system.

The ‘Shilpa Sayura’ e-learning package covers eight school subjects, in Sinhala from grade six to O level. Shilpa Sayura’s simple interactive means of self study caters to students in remote communities with no access to urban educational resources. Still in its pilot stage Shilpa Sayura now operates in 20 ‘Nenasalas’ or tele-centers located in distant villages and promotes the concept of self learning among students in these secluded communities…The next phase would be the transformation of Shilpa Sayura into a National project to strengthen rural education and bridge the gap between rural and urban students.

M-Pesa

The next project takes place in Kenya, where the blog Global Warming contends the mobile phone is revolutionizing society.

There are presently over 17 million [mobile phone] subscribers and the fact that it is presently facilitating money transfers almost says it all. There are the two things that make everything work. One is communication and the second is convenience of transferring cash. After that you are in business anywhere.

M-Pesa began in 2007 as a way to perform simple banking transactions through cell phones. The telecom firms behind the project didn’t charge registration fees or require customers to have a bank account, often a major hurdle in Kenya because few people deal with traditional banks. Once signed-up, customers can use the M-Pesa application to pay bills, purchase more phone credits and transfer money within Kenya through data-enabled mobile phones. M-Pesa now allows customers to book airline tickets. Safaricom, the company responsible for M-Pesa, is beginning a pilot project to let customers pay for water usage.

M-Pesa agent in Bunda by emilsjoblom in Flickr.

In July 2009 M-Pesa totaled more than seven million subscribers, who collect or send money through a network of more than 1400 bank agents, making it the largest bank in the country. These customers transfer more than $2.5 million every month.

Just a few weeks ago, M-Pesa went international, moving into the United Kingdom by allowing people to send money back to phone numbers in Kenya through a web interface. The transaction costs as little as $8 US for sending 150 Pounds. A 2005 study found traditional money transfer firms charged fees between 2.5 and 40 percent of the transfer for anything below 100 Pounds.

David Zarraga, from the blog Mobile Behavior has a good rundown on how M-Pesa works.

Registered M-PESA customers can “deposit” hard currency with any M-PESA agent in exchange for e-money, which is uploaded into the customer’s M-PESA account. For 38 US cents, the customer can then transfer this money to another registered customer’s M-PESA account via SMS. Once the recipient receives the SMS confirmation, the hard currency can then be withdrawn from the nearest M-PESA agent, completing the money transfer process.

How does the M-PESA service benefit the average Kenyan? Olga Morawczynski, a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who spoke at the GSM World Congress in Barcelona last February, shared the story of Martin, a shoe-maker in Kibera, an informal settlement just outside Nairobi. Martin makes about US$ 20 a day from his trade and sends a quarter of his earnings to his wife and mother, who live in Western Kenya, over 100 miles away. M-PESA saves Martin time, allowing him to work his trade instead of having to travel far outside his place of work to find a bank. The service also enables him to make frequent transfers – about 5 times a month – thereby allowing him to send a week’s earnings when his family needs the money most.

The blog Bankelele: Nairobi Banker lists advantages and disadvantages for banking with M-Pesa.

Benefits of m-pesa banking
- 24 hour banking: More reach & access than any bank or ATM network
- Mobile banking with operator tends to be cheaper then mobile banking via bank provided services
- Saving in transport costs and banking transaction costs
- Can pay a variety of bills for utilities at a low cost
Challenges of m-pesa banking
- Lack of float at dealers to transact/occasional mpesa system downtime
- No credit history; and the clumsy expensive statement from Safaricom not useful yet
- Calls for discipline to build savings
- Funds are not insured, and are more prone to crime. And dealing with a stolen phone in Kenya is not a pleasant experience.

eChoupal
Indian Tobacco Company, one of India’s largest exporters, created eChoupal, a series of rural information centers where farmers can communicate directly to other farmers, different markets and experts through the internet. These village internet kiosks were first installed for farmers to learn in local languages the latest information regarding national and international prices in soy, wheat, tobacco and shrimp. But the platform has morphed to providing other important information, such as weather conditions and the latest scientific practices. In 2006, eChoupal counted 3.5 million farmers who used 5,200 internet kiosks throughout more than 30,000 villages.

Harvesting Wheat #1 by Meanest Indian on Flickr.

The farmers pay a local coordinator a small sum to use the kiosk, which can also be used to order seed, fertilizers and other goods.

The blog NeoProducts Kiosks, from the UK, makes the point that part of eChoupal’s success comes from leaving behind the traditional buyers.

e-Choupal has been created by ITC Limited to enable rural farmers in India to buy and sell agricultural produce like soya beans, wheat, and coffee. It does this by allowing them directly to negotiate the sale of their produce via a network of PCs and kiosks in 6,500 centres spread across 100 districts in 10 states. Previously, the farmers had to go through numerous and sometime corrupt intermediaries.

What a great idea and what a fantastic use of kiosks! Allowing shared public access to interactive technology is what kiosks are all about. And this is only the beginning.

Chirag Jethmalani is a management student from Mumbai who blogs about Indian business in Squamble. Here he provides his take on e Choupal.

e Choupal was conceived to tackle the challenges posed by the unique features of Indian agriculture, characterized by fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and the involvement of numerous intermediaries…

Traditionally, these commodities were procured in “mandis” (major agricultural marketing centers in rural areas of India), where the middleman used to make most of the profit. These middlemen used unscientific and sometimes outright unfair means to judge the quality of the product to set the price. Difference in price for good quality and inferior quality was less, and hence there was no incentive for the farmers to invest and produce good quality output. With eChoupal, the farmers have a choice and the exploitative power of the middleman is neutralised.
ICT platform that facilitates flow of information and knowledge, and supports market transactions on line.
* It transmits Information (weather, prices, news),
* It transfers Knowledge (farm management, risk management)
* It facilitates sales of Farm Inputs (screened for quality) and
* It offers the choice of an alternative Output-marketing channel (convenience, lower transaction costs) to the farmer right at his doorstep
* It is an interlocking network of partnerships (ITC + Met Dept + Universities + Input COs + Sanyojaks, the erstwhile Commission Agents) bringing the best-inclass in information, knowledge and inputs.

Just because e-Choupal has a good platform and business model doesn’t make it a gurantee for success in India. To do this, people must understand rural markets.

Rural markets are both economic and social networks and there is a strong connection between the operation of social and economic transactions. Understanding the operations is vital before the systems are conceptualized. Use of local population, as much as possible helped the network to get the acceptance closely.

baby by gabi_menashe

When a woman dies during pregnancy, childbirth or due to complications after delivery, it affects not only the family, but also the whole community. These videos, by different human rights organizations, go beyond statistics to tell us the stories of women and their families as they struggle to understand why it is that so many women are dying during childbirth and what needs to be done to stop this.

First, the White Ribbon Alliance produced a four minute video titled Birth and Death explaining the seriousness of Maternal Mortality and how it can be stopped:

UNICEF also created a two minute video to raise awareness about this issue, with 5 steps that can be taken to diminish maternal mortality: education, respect, empowerment, investing and protection.

In this next video, In Silence: Maternal Mortality in India by Human Rights Watch, photographer Susan Meiselas and reporter Dumeetha Luthra traveled to India to follow the story of a woman who died after giving birth:

In Peru, as told by this piece done for CARE by Phil Borges, the Watchmen for Lives program to decrease maternal mortality has proven to be a success: by empowering and educating women from within the communities in the importance of healthcare during pregnancy and by making a chart for midwives with warning signs on when to send women to a clinic - so more are going to clinics to give birth, dramatically reducing the numbers of deaths due to complications during labor.

Amnesty International has this documentary piece, 18 minutes long, about Maternal Mortality in Sierra Leone. One in 8 women die in Childbirth there: the inability to pay for medical attention, a practically non-existent healthcare system, lack of trained medical practitioners and understaffed and understocked clinics are the main reasons. As the women in the video tell: everyone there knows a woman who has died during pregnancy or labor.

And from Australia, students from the Nursing and Midwife program at the University of Sydney have created Birthing Kits that they've delivered to developing countries to try and prevent unnecessary deaths. It includes a plastic sheet to put under the mother, surgical gloves, scalpel blades, gauze, soap and string to tie off the umbilical cord. In the video, they tell of their initiative and the successful experience they've had in Bangladesh.

In a series of posts, we shall trace and examine the increasing role and impact of ICTs in the area of disaster management.

Nobel Laureate R.K. Pachauri, while addressing the 5^th convocation of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT) in January 2009, highlighted the need for ICTs in dealing with natural disasters and other weather-related events that pose a threat to human life and property.

[…] Climate science has advanced at a phenomenal rate largely because powerful computers can now run very complex models that simulate climatic conditions on land as well as the oceans. Our assessment of future changes in the climate as a result both of natural as well as human factors is dependent largely on the power of models that are being used today and our ability to assess the impacts of climate change in different parts of the world. In response to future projections of these events, governments, civil society and even business organizations can take effective measures to adapt to changes that would occur.

Citing an example from 2003, Dr. Pachauri said:

“I would like to give the example of a major heat wave that took place in parts of Andhra Pradesh in 2003, as a result of which almost 4000 people lost their lives according to official records. […]

“When studying this major problem, it became apparent that ICT infrastructure could have saved perhaps all the lives that were lost if it had been put in place properly and utilized effectively. There was, for instance, no early warning provided to the victims of the heat wave. Nor was there any follow up in terms of providing medical advice to those who suffered from heat stress, such as the need for oral rehydration therapy and simple healthcare for those who were affected. Even television channels could have been used to spread proper awareness and information to protect the lives of those who were affected were not used.

“There are several examples of coastal disasters where people affected can be warned on a timely basis and evacuated before the disaster itself takes place. When a hurricane hits the coast of Florida, the infrastructure available is used to provide adequate warning and notice to those likely to be affected, and entire townships are evacuated. When a cyclone of even lower intensity hits the coasts of Bangladesh or Orissa, major damage takes place, because not only is there lack of shelters and infrastructure to house those who are affected, but there are inadequate systems for early warning and guidance.

“Today even mobile telephones could be used as an effective medium to provide early warning and thus save lives and property”.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking at the Telecom World 2009 in Geneva, also highlighted the role of ICTs in addressing key issues, including natural disaster reduction.

“Through good climate science and information sharing, ICTs can help reduce the risk and impact of natural disasters… when an earthquake hits, a coordinated ICT system can monitor developments, send out emergency messages and help people to cope.”

The UN Secretary-General’s statement echoes the paradigm shift in Disaster Management mentioned in the 2005 presentation by Sujit Mohanty, namely:

• From relief and recovery to Risk & Vulnerability management
• Introducing culture of preparedness at all levels
• Strengthen decentralized response capacity in the country
• Empowerment of vulnerable groups and ensuring livelihoods
• Learning from past disasters.

In the aftermaths of large-scale natural calamities such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the world was forced to wake up to the need for coordinated and collaborative harnessing of the power of ICT systems in managing natural disasters.

Paul Currion in humanitarian.info stated that:

“In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there has been an astonishing amount of activity in web-based initiatives responding to the consequences of the disaster. Examining the characteristics of the response of the technology community to Hurricane Katrina tells us much about the way the web has shaped social responses to disaster, raises some interesting issues about the impact of ICT in disaster response, and points towards what might happen in future.[…]

“It was clear following the Indian Ocean tsunami that the information revolution was in the process of changing the way in which we respond to disasters. This was demonstrated by the rise of web-based fund-raising; Christian Aid raised over $700,000 online in nine days, amounting to nearly four times as much as it raised through donations over the phone. The spread of broadband, improvements in satellite telecommunications and the availability of imagery has made possible GIS and cartographic projects that would not have been possible five years ago. The rise of the open source movement has led to initiatives such as the Sahana project, an attempt to develop a suite of web-enabled applications for disaster response organisations.

Currion goes on to talk about the “first responders of the wired world”, netizens who spring to action to fill in information gaps that the governments of the respective countries and even the traditional media often struggle to fill. However, given the high influx of information post-Katrina, it was soon apparent that multiple data streams would be more effective if they were collated, consolidated and served from a more centralized platform. Thus we saw initiatives such as the Katrina PeopleFinder Project and the Katrina Help Wiki come into play.

In this context, it would not be unfair to say that the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami (SEA-EAT) blog, set up during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, was a trendsetter of sorts–the first project of its kind that demonstrated the power of engaging ordinary people effectively to channel information in order to bridge the gap between those who needed help and those who had help to offer. According to Dina Mehta, one of the key people behind the SEA-EAT blog,

“I think what we managed to do was demonstrate perhaps the largest ‘people's' coordinated effort on the web during disasters, that it was possible and that too without any formal organizational structure. There’s also something in the ability for these efforts to bring in ordinary citizens from all walks of life - people who aren’t necessarily dedicated or working in this space - most of us have different professions and regular jobs too - but just a human need to help.”

While the SEA-EAT blog focused on “keeping the information flowing”, the Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System in Sri Lanka functioned as a more structured, holistic system that helped manage the large scale of the disaster of 2004. The project was deployed by the Sri Lankan government's Center of National Operations (CNO) which included the Center of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA). Generalized later for global use, Sahana has now grown to become a globally recognized project with deployments in many other disasters such as the South Asian earthquake in Pakistan (2005), Southern Leyte Mudslide Disaster in Phillipines (2006), the Jogjarkata Earthquake in Indonesia (2006), the Peru Earthquake (2007), the Myanmar Cyclone (2008), etc.

In 2005, Michael Gurstein of the New Jersey Institute of Technology wrote his reflections on the web-based initiatives and what he perceived as the need gaps in these situations:

“Scanning the Net for information and for stories I was struck by a couple of things concerning the role (and lack of role) of the Net in these events. The Net appeared to be playing a very significant part in responding to the needs of those at a distance–the on-lookers for information, stories, ways of contributing and so on; families and friends of those possibly impacted with attempts at creating listings of the found and the lost and for those on the ground to manage the concerns and queries of those farther away; and one expects that behind the scenes much of the co-ordination and planning that is being done by aid organizations is being done in ways that are pushing the boundaries of Computer Mediated Communication and managing at a distance.

“But I guess I'm a bit surprised that the Net wasn't able (yet?) to bridge the information divides between those who had some idea about what might be coming (the scientists and those immediately impacted) and those who might have been able to make some use of that information in the places where the impact took appreciable time to be realized.

“The problem here was not, I think a “the Digital Divide” that is, it wasn’t because of a lack of “access” to information, although apparently that too was a problem overall; rather, it seemed to me to be another example of what I've referred to elsewhere as the gap between “access” and “effective use”…From what I can gather many if not most of the communities impacted had Internet “access” in one form or another. What they (and here I would include those with the knowledge who couldn't use it as well as those without knowledge) lacked rather, was the social infrastructure which could have turned Internet access into an “effectively usable” early warning system.

“Some had the information—the scientists who detected the earthquake and could understand how that could result in a Tsunami and those who felt the early impact either of the earthquake or the Tsunami—but couldn't use it. Others needed the information—the coastal villages around the Indian Ocean—but couldn't or weren’t able to “get it” at least in a timely and usable form. The “degrees of separation” imposed by nationality, language and perhaps most important, domains of knowledge and profession (and the related lack of social linkages, network based trust relationships, communication pathways and so on) impeded the communication between the two groups and one wonders whether this was simply a matter of it still being early days in our Internetted world or something more profound and permanent. (Michael Gurstein, The Journal of Community Informatics, (2005) Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp. 14-17)”

Observing the loss of lives in typhoon Ketsana that hit Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia in October 2009, Paul Conneally posted the following on his blog Head Down, Eyes Open:

“In many poverty stricken areas there is no access to TV or radio (or Internet for that matter) to help communicate warning messages. Aid agencies must work with communities to find out which methods of communication work for them at the time of an emergency and run simulation exercises to put this into practice. Often mobile phone text messages or even sending people out into the streets with megaphones, as was the case in these emergencies, prove to be most successful.

“[…]Early warning, early action in high disaster risk countries needs to be seen as a mindset, not a mechanism or technology, and works best when it spans timescales, anticipating disaster by days, hours, months, years and even decades. It must also be firmly linked to early action by decision-makers, and must cover ‘the last mile' -linking early warning mechanisms not just to the most ‘at risk' communities, but to the most vulnerable people within those communities.

“Strengthening community capacity to prevent and/or cope with the impact of disasters and crises is a concrete way to save lives and better protect livelihoods, and prevent such shocks from crippling development within the poorest countries. Early warning and early action is also more cost effective than traditional disaster response and saves more lives per pound spent: public money buys four times as much humanitarian ‘impact' if spent on preparation and risk reduction, rather than on relief items.”

In India, the 2004 tsunami was a clarion call for the government, NGOs and the civil society to effect a paradigm shift and realise that preparedness was the key to minimising the impact of natural disasters.

To enable better planning and preparedness, the India Disaster Resource Network [idrn.gov.in] was set up as a National initiative under the Govt. of India-UNDP DRM programme in collaboration with National Informatics Center, Government of India. The task of this Network was to create an online database for capturing the countrywide inventory of equipment and skilled human resources available for emergency response. The role of this ambitious, yet comprehensive database would be to help minimize emergency response time through effective decision-making on mobilization of human & material resources. The project was to ensure systematic data collection & collation from government line departments, public sector units, the corporate sector, etc at the district level. Other initiatives launched were:

• The Disaster Inventory Database (implemented in Orissa) that would allow vulnerability analysis through longitudinal study of geo-referenced inventories of local level data of past disasters (small, medium and large-scale).
• Community Contingency plans based on GIS technology that enable the visual presentation of critical data by location that can be used for coordination and implementation of relief efforts
• Development of communications infrastructure to ensure 100% coverage of disaster prone areas through satellite and ISDN linkages
• Community based ICT systems and
• Disaster/ incident surveillance system that will allow for quick, smooth, seamless data capturing and disseminating facilities.

Here is an example of implementation of this strategy/philosophy of preparedness by an NGO in Tamil Nadu following the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004:

In the next post in the series, we shall explore disaster warning systems and the various ICT-based tools and applications that have been, are being, and can be put to use as an early warning system to help reduce and or mitigate the severe damage to life and property in the wake of natural disasters across the globe.